Paul Thagard talks about climate changes from the perspective of goals:

If the scientists are right, the consequences of failing to act to reduce global warming will be enormous, including massive flooding of coastal areas and weather extremes such as droughts. Why and how do leaders in the US and other countries such as Canada deny that global warming is a problem that needs to be addressed by restricting carbon emissions?

Scott Findlay and I recently published an article in which we explained climate change denial as resulting from a natural thinking tendency called motivated inference, in which beliefs are based on people's goals and emotions rather than on good evidence. All of us are prone to motivated inference, in situations such as these:
Romantic relationships: my lover treats me poorly, but he/she will change.
Parenting: my child hates school, but will settle down and straighten out eventually.
Medicine: this pain in my chest is indigestion, not a heart attack.
Politics: the new leader will be the country's savior.
Sports: our team has been losing, but we're going to play great today.
Law: the evidence against my hero is serious, but he couldn't have done it.
Religion: life is hard, but my caring God will lead me to eternal bliss.
Economics: this rapid economic growth is a sign of a new kind of economy, not a bubble.
Research: the article I'm writing is my best ever and will get into a top journal.

Motivated inference is not just simpleminded wishful thinking, in that motivations do not lead directly to beliefs. Rather, our goals lead us to acquire and consider information selectively, so that we manage to find some evidence that makes us think we are being reasonable in maintaining an emotion-based belief that we ought to doubt.

The motivations that encourage politicians such as Rick Perry to deny human-caused global warming are clear: they don't like government intervention in the economy in general, and in particular they don't like interference with the oil industry, a major source of carbon emissions. If global warming is a serious problem, then there needs to be massive actions by governments across the world to change people's energy practices that produce greenhouse gases. Oil company executives and allied politicians do not want to see such actions take place, so they make various kinds of maneuvers to undermine scientific conclusions: research is flawed, global warming is just natural fluctuation, and so on. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...-change-denial

See also: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...-change-denial

In Human Caused Climate Disruption: Dangerous Denial or Great Grandiosity?, The Lazarus Institute offers a different perspective.

The fact is, there are simply too many variables and the complexity of our planet's climate is so far beyond our current understanding that no firm conclusions can yet be reached. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...at-grandiosity.

Mr. Lazarus presents many reasons to be skeptical and concludes.

Yet we mighty humans in the course of a mere half-century have radically disrupted our planet's climate? Well, forgive my skepticism! Still, in keeping with Pascal's Wager I'll bet with the herd mentality and accede to the possibility of anthropogenic climate change and take appropriate steps to reduce my "carbon footprint" because it will be quite a while until enough unequivocal data are in to firmly conclude the matter one way or another.

So, are the skeptics in denial or are the climate disruption proponents grandiose? You decide. Perhaps you might conclude that the data thus far suggest either a politically convenient lie or a very dire truth. But unless you question the propaganda, ask the right questions, and carefully examine the science, you are simply taking on faith or feeling what the political-media complex is dispensing.

What makes the case for me it how reducing our carbon footprint is beneficial whether or not global warming is the result of man-made activities.

[Ygrec23]

This is interesting too:

http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2011...novation.shtml

the evidence for global warming is overwhelming. i do not understand why people choose to ignore it. we have been suffering from the effects to the weather for a while now and they have been devastating. it's just going to get worse. the scariest part is that a lot - maybe most - of the young people i meet don't seem to care at all. they don't recycle and they don't believe in doing things for the public good. instead, it's all about them. like i said, i don't get it because the small changes we all have to make are not hard to do.

[Gus1234U]

what i find interesting is not the debate over whether humans are causing global climate change or not,, we clearly are huge contributors to the ecological devastation of the world... but that so many believe that the "end of the world as we know it" is inevitable and inescapable, and are just walking out towards that tsunami wave picking up fish.

[Ygrec23]

Originally Posted by Gus1234U

what i find interesting is not the debate over whether humans are causing global climate change or not,, we clearly are huge contributors to the ecological devastation of the world... but that so many believe that the "end of the world as we know it" is inevitable and inescapable, and are just walking out towards that tsunami wave picking up fish.

Quite right, Gus. At least I think so. If you read through the comment columns following climate change articles in any major newspaper or blog there are so many people who seem to want the end of the world to arrive as quickly as possible. For all different kinds of reasons. I don't think that's going to happen. Serious, natural climate fluctuations (many of them) over the past million years are what some paleontologists believe has forced the evolution of homo sapiens. (See: Humanity's Descent, by Rick Potts.) Lots of people appear to have a gut conviction that mankind is somehow an insult to nature and needs to be wound up and finished. That's very doubtful indeed. We're still a young species. We'll be around for quite some time yet.